TruShield™ Certified Headlines Two Sessions at The Outlook on Active Nutrition

TruShield Certified launched last October with one brand partner. Eleven months later it has two sessions at The Outlook on Active Nutrition, and three past PricePlow Podcast guests are on the panels.

When Lori Bestervelt launched TruShield™ Certified in October 2025, it had one flagship brand partner and a single top-tier WADA-experienced lab behind it. Eleven months later, the growing banned-substance certification program is headlining a dedicated educational track at the second annual Outlook on Active Nutrition, presented by Nutritional Outlook on September 24, 2026, at the National Conference Center in East Windsor, New Jersey.

Two sessions carry the TruShield name this year. Between them, the panels include three past guests of the PricePlow Podcast, plus a familiar face from our own team moderating a related conversation elsewhere on the agenda. We've followed this event since its 2025 debut, when Ben Kane was among the inaugural speakers, so watching a partner go from a single certified brand to a two-session educational track in one cycle is great news -- TruShield's adoption is accelerating, and it's for the betterment of the industry.

The Two TruShield-Powered Sessions to Catch

If you just need the quick links, here they are:

1. Beyond Sport Certification: The CON-CRET Case Study

   Lori Bestervelt is joined by Mark Faulkner of Vireo Systems to talk about greater transparency, quality, and confidence in supplements for consumers, using CON-CRET as the flagship example.

2. Certified Clean, Building Consumer Confidence in Sports Nutrition

   Marc Lobliner of Ketone Labs joins Doug Grant of Optimal Health Systems and Karen Hecht of AstraReal bring together their perspectives on the forces driving adulteration, coming from the angles of professional athletics, brand-building, and ingredient science.

This article details those sessions, explains how TruShield got here so fast, and links back to some of our incredible content with many of the names listed above. Before jumping in, head over to Nutritional Outlook, get signed up (TruShield has provided a sponsored coupon code of TRUSHIELD15 to save on costs), and sign up for our our TruShield Certified news alerts:

What TruShield™ Certified Actually Tests For

TruShield™ Certified brings WADA-level banned substance testing to supplements. Led by Lori Bestervelt (who created NSF 173 & Certified for Sport), it tests for 400+ banned substances using the same lab sports organizations trust when athletes test positive.

TruShield™ is built and operated by EagleDX, a subsidiary of the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL), one of only two WADA-experienced anti-doping labs in the US and the lab that professional sports organizations turn to when an athlete tests positive and a supplement is under suspicion. WADA rules keep accredited testing labs separate from the brands and programs they certify, which is why SMRTL created EagleDX to run TruShield as its own entity. But it's still the same world-class lab (possibly the absolute best in the world).

Bestervelt built the program after 22 years at NSF International, where she wrote the original NSF/ANSI 173 supplement testing standard and created NSF Certified for Sport before leaving in 2019. She joined SMRTL in November 2024 to build something narrower and more current. "We're designed to complement and not duplicate", she's said of the approach. "Our scope is very focused."

That focus centers on batch-by-batch screening against more than 480 WADA-recognized compounds (up from 400+ at launch less than a year ago), combined with verification that a product's label matches its Certificate of Analysis and that its manufacturing facility carries valid GMP certification.

Testing for More Substances, and Growing

Most established programs test for somewhere around 300 substances. TruShield's panel reaches into categories those programs often skip, including glucocorticoids and HIF stabilizers, a newer class of performance enhancer that testing has only recently caught up to.

Given that they've added eighty new compounds to the list since starting shows how wild this space is. In order to keep up, you need the best scientists and a relentless fight against spiking and doping. TruShield is the definition of that kind of fight.

Most supplement certification programs screen around 290 banned substances. TruShield™ Certified covers 480+, and that standard now extends to certified ingredients. ReDaxin™ and AstaReal® Astaxanthin softgels are the first ingredient inputs to complete the process.

A Five-Step Certification Process

The process itself runs in five steps:

1. A brand submits for approval
2. A minimum of three finished-product samples from each batch go to SMRTL's ISO 17025 lab
3. That batch gets tested against the full substance panel
4. Results come back documenting compliance
5. Only then can the TruShield mark go on the label

Every certified batch or lot is posted publicly, first on TruShield's site and now through its companion mobile app, so a coach, retailer, or athlete can check a specific lot number before it ever reaches a shelf.

Ingredient Certification Available

The certification has also moved upstream. ReDaxin™ from RedLeaf Biologics and AstaReal® Astaxanthin softgels became the first two raw materials to clear TruShield's ingredient-level process this spring, closing a gap where a brand's finished-product testing meant little if a contaminated input entered the formula before the final batch was ever made.

Now on to the session, with many of the familiar faces:

Session One: Certified Clean, Building Consumer Confidence in Sports Nutrition

Thursday, September 24, 11:15 AM to 12:00 PM in Room B, this panel takes on adulteration risk directly: what's driving it, how brands detect and prevent it, and how certification turns product integrity into a real point of differentiation. Nico Saraceno, Senior Editor at MJH Life Sciences, moderates a lineup that PricePlow readers will recognize.

• Marc Lobliner, Ketone Labs and CleanForm Nutrition

  

  Marc Lobliner of CleanForm Nutrition and Ketone Labs discusses TruShield Certified banned substance testing, Conor McGregor's MAC Energy drink, and the future of goBHB on Episode #232 of the PricePlow Podcast.

  Marc "The Machine" Lobliner is a recurring PricePlow Podcast guest, most recently on Episode #232, where he explained why CleanForm Nutrition chose TruShield over BSCG and NSF to certify the goBHB Energy Shot. His long-running fight against amino acid spiking makes him a natural fit for a panel built around adulteration.

• Doug Grant, Optimal Health Systems

  Doug Grant founded Optimal Health Systems in 1990 and became the first full-time nutritionist hired by an NBA franchise three years later, eventually working with the Spurs and the Heat through seven championship runs. On Episode #225, he told us OHS was already running third-party testing before anyone required it, which made TruShield the natural next step rather than a new habit to build.

• Karen Hecht, PhD, AstaReal Inc.

  Karen Hecht rounds out the panel as VP of Sciences at AstaReal, whose astaxanthin softgels were one of the first two ingredients to clear TruShield's ingredient-level certification, alongside ReDaxin™. Her seat at the table puts the ingredient-supply side of the adulteration conversation next to two finished-brand perspectives.

See the official page: Certified Clean, Building Consumer Confidence in Sports Nutrition.

Session Two: Beyond Sport Certification, The CON-CRĒT Case Study

Episode 225 of the PricePlow Podcast features Doug Grant, founder and chief formulator of Optimal Health Systems, discussing digestive enzyme science, NBA blood work, microplastics testing with PlasticTest and ChemZyme, and why OHS chose TruShield™ Certified for their product line.

The second session runs Thursday, September 24, 1:00 PM to 1:45 PM, back in Room B less than an hour after Certified Clean wraps. It pairs TruShield™ with the brand that put it on the map. Bestervelt, whose origin story with TruShield we first covered alongside SMRTL COO Thane Campbell on Episode #193, joins Mark Faulkner, president of Vireo Systems (CON-CRĒT's parent company), to unpack what banned-substance certification actually covers, the misconceptions manufacturers hold about testing, and where it fits inside a broader quality and risk-management program.

Faulkner co-founded Aegis Sciences Corporation, one of the industry's early anti-doping labs, long before he chose TruShield to certify CON-CRĒT's Creatine HCl capsules, a decision he's described as "a match made in heaven" given his own testing background. CON-CRĒT was TruShield's first flagship brand partner at launch, and its Creatine HCl capsules remain listed on TruShield's certified-products page today, tested against the WADA prohibited list batch by batch.

The session title points at a specific tension worth sitting with: plenty of certification conversations stop at whether a brand has a badge. This one digs into what the badge is actually verifying on a batch-by-batch basis, and why a founder who already understood testing rigor from the inside still went looking for a certifier built the way TruShield is.

See the official page: Certified Clean, Building Consumer Confidence in Sports Nutrition.

From One Certified Brand to an Industry Track in Under a Year

The timeline in this space moves insanely fast.

WADA's 2026 prohibited list is now in effect. New banned substances include BAM15, flmodafinil, and fladrafinil--all found in supplements. One contaminated product can end an Olympic career. Testing depth matters more than ever.

TruShield™ launched in October 2025 screening 400+ substances with CON-CRĒT as its anchor partner and RedLeaf Biologics and NO:NAME Supplements already in the pipeline. By November, Bestervelt and Campbell were on the PricePlow Podcast walking through the origin story. January brought the 2026 WADA Prohibited List into effect, and February saw NO:NAME formally expand its TruShield coverage across its lineup. April brought the ReDaxin™ and AstaReal® ingredient certifications, with the substance panel already past 480.

By summer, TruShield had shipped a consumer verification app, landed Doug Grant on the podcast in July, and welcomed Marc Lobliner back for a second appearance in August. Now, less than a year after launch, it has two dedicated sessions at a major industry conference.

Timing Matters: Peptides and the Next WADA List

WADA typically finalizes each year's Prohibited List revisions in September, with the update taking effect the following January 1. That puts the 2027 List's approval in roughly the same window as this conference.

Peptide hormones, growth factors, and related mimetics already occupy their own category (S2) on the current list, and that category has only grown as testing labs identify new compounds circulating in sport, everything from growth hormone secretagogues to newer research compounds like BPC-157, which WADA classifies as a non-approved substance no matter how it's marketed to consumers.

Elsewhere at The Outlook on Active Nutrition, PricePlow's own Ben Kane will moderate a session on exactly that territory: the line between legal dietary peptide ingredients and the gray-market injectable peptides drawing FDA and HHS scrutiny, a topic Nutritional Outlook previewed here. It's a fitting conversation to have in the same room. A certification built around a fixed substance list falls behind the moment WADA updates it.

TruShield's panel is designed to expand as new compounds are identified, which is the same posture it'll need every time a new list comes down, peptides included.

Catching Both Sessions

Between Certified Clean and Beyond Sport Certification, TruShield™ occupies a full educational track built on a simple premise: banned-substance testing that grows with the threat instead of sitting still. Add ingredient-level certification, a growing bench of professional-sports-connected brand partners, and a consumer app that lets anyone check a batch number, and it's easy to see why brands keep choosing TruShield over the older, broader-but-shallower programs.

Nutritional Outlook® deserves some credit here too. Between its Future Nutra Foundation and Women in Nutraceuticals (WIN) partnerships and now a second straight year pulling together a speaker lineup like this one, The Outlook on Active Nutrition has grown into a real fixture on the active nutrition calendar, and we hope it sticks around. TruShield's two sessions sit inside a broader showcase rather than a standalone sponsor slot, and it's definitely worth checking out.

Registration is open now for the September 24 event in East Windsor, NJ, and code TRUSHIELD15 takes a bit off the ticket price.